Notre mémoire porte sur le volet propositionnel dans l'oeuvre de MacIntyre. Plus particulièrement sur la vertu dans son éthique. Ce volet s'articule sur le schéma classique hérité d'Aristote et situe dans un cadre socio-politique et dans la tradition morale classique. MacIntyre ne fait pas que répéter, il se situe lui-même dans cette tradition vivante. S'il tient au paradigme moral d'Aristote, il veut en renouveler l'assise en remplaçant la biologie métaphysique par une téléologie sociale. Pour lui, la vertu se comprend dans son insertion dans trois unités progressives de sens et de valeur: les pratiques, l'unité narrative d'une vie, leur inscription dans une tradition morale qui les porte. Nous évaluons la proposition de Maclntyre sur deux points nevralgiques: le remplacement de la téléologie d'Aristote; le concept aristotélicien de vertu. Avons-nous là, sur la morale et sur la vertu, la bonne ré-actualisation d'Aristote et de la tradition qui porte son nom?

Cette recherche questionne le platonisme de Plutarque pour dégager sa philosophie politique en examinant dans quelle mesure le parallèle Lycurgue/Numa s'accorde avec la République sur la nature de la relation âme/Cité. Nous dégageons d'abord une philosophie politique qui se veut une critique de la République dans les deux Vies: le bonheur de la Cité (Sparte) et le bonheur de l'homme (Numa) s'excluent mutuellement, d'ou l'impossibilité de la Cité idéale et du philosophe-roi. Notre lecture de la République nuance ensuite cette critique en montrant que l'âme et la Cité dépendent aussi l'une de l'autre puisque les facettes de l'âme, eros et thumos, sont en tension. L'accord de Plutarque et Platon sur cette psychologie permet finalement une nouvelle comparaison des deux Vies avec la République établissant la philosophie politique platonicienne de Plutarque---l'éducation pour l'âme et la Cité---et sa critique---les bioi en parallèle réussissent mieux cette éducation que le dialogue dramatique platonicien.

Marcel Gauchet propose une critique de la démocratie des droits de l'homme qui est fondée d'une part sur sa compréhension de la modernité et, d'autre part, sur ses thèses quant à l'être du social. Ces thèses lui permettent non seulement d'affirmer que la démocratie est un régime normal, car elle laisse libre cours à la condition historique de l'humanité, mais elles lui permettent aussi, en tant qu'elles forment un ensemble de normes, de juger des régimes politiques passés et présents. II critique les droits de l'homme en tant qu'idéologie et en tant que politique démocratique parce qu'ils ne sont pas une politique: ils mènent à l'impuissance collective et ne favorisent aucunement l'émancipation des individus. En raison de sa démarche descriptive, il n'arrive toutefois pas à formuler une politique qui permettrait à la démocratie d'avoir prise sur elle-même.

Dans ce mémoire, nous analysons en profondeur le chapitre de Droit naturel et histoire que Strauss consacre au sociologue Max Weber. Nous soutenons que Strauss y critique non pas Weber, mais plutôt le relativisme dogmatique. Nous montrons que selon Strauss, le relativisme dogmatique est un vice intellectuel et moral qu'il faut combattre en raison de son influence néfaste sur la pensée et la société. Après avoir exposé la conception straussienne de la philosophie et de la prudence du philosophe, nous montrons comment Strauss s'oppose au relativisme dogmatique à la fois pour des raisons philosophiques et politiques. D'une part, le relativisme dogmatique est un vice intellectuel qui tend à détourner les hommes de la voie de la philosophie zététique prônée par Strauss. D'autre part, il est un vice moral néfaste pour la société, car en gagnant en influence, il tend à détruire les convictions des citoyens sur la nature du bien.

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to unearth the ethic implicit in, or, better, the possible ethical implications of, Heidegger's Being and Time; and, second, to demonstrate the exact manner in which its latent ethic or ethical bearing, involves a retrieval of the Kantian ethic as Heidegger casts it. Specifically, it is argued that, in summoning Dasein to its authenticity, the call of conscience commands self-responsibility, respect for one's dignity as end-in-itself, preservation of one's ownmost potentiality-for-being as possibility, and 'philosophizing', understood as a radical and perpetual (self)questioning. Furthermore, it is shown that these self-directed imperatives entail certain obligations towards Others. Ultimately, the Heideggerian 'ethic of authenticity' is criticized for its excessive emphasis on the form of the will, as opposed to its content. While the study demonstrates how almost every one of the obligations to which Dasein is summoned by the call of conscience can be said to have been retrieved through Heidegger's appropriative reading of Kant, the study's chief conclusion is that the Heideggerian ethic's almost exclusive attention to the how of Dasein's being can be retraced to a certain, voluntaristic strand in the early Heidegger's interpretation of the Kantian ethic.

The study undertakes a critical examination of Hegel's philosophy by constructing a Foucauldian critique of Hegel's use of interpellative techniques (i.e. the call to become subjects of Hegelian Science) that rely on tautological arguments. Salient aspects of Foucault's research on history, governmentality, and subjectivity and power are applied, respectively, to Hegel's teleological metaphysics, his concept of Civil Society, and his notion of the State as freedom. Through this Foucauldian reading, poverty is revealed as an endemic feature of the capitalist economy, while war is demonstrated to be a necessary practice of statecraft. By indicating how the interpellation of individuals into subjective categories forecloses alternative arrangements of economic and political power, the study shows that the Hegelian subject is extremely vulnerable to a logic of domination and oppression. The study then unpacks the truth-effects of Hegel's pedagogical design for the University of Berlin, revealing that his attempt to construct a subject of the modern liberal State is a gesture of violence with dangerous political implications.

In this thesis, I argue for the position that happiness is a communal concept in Plato's Republic. By a communal concept, I mean that one must act for the sake of one's community in order to be happy. I make this argument by contending that justice, a notion which involves the consideration of others, is the key to making an individual happy. I argue that Plato has both an altruistic and egoistic concept of justice, and that the interplay between these two concepts of justice constitutes Plato's concept of happiness in the Republic. What results is a kind of happiness which is associated with internal goods, such as having a well-balanced soul, as opposed to the idea of happiness being related to the acquisition of external goods like wealth.

The goal of this thesis is to present a coherent and exhaustive picture of Wittgenstein's critique of the logicist definition of number as presented by his philosophy of mathematics in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . It does so by considering several critiques that Wittgenstein makes of the logicist's definition of number. Furthermore, this thesis compares Wittgenstein's operational definition of number---the central feature of Wittgenstein's theory---to Church's lambda calculus to demonstrate how Wittgenstein has a similar understanding of arithmetic.

The argument presented in this paper is that during the Shoah the Nazis were attempting to further enforce the understanding that humanity is essentially self-destructive or superfluous. Several writings are examined more closely to support this argument: Emil Fackenheim's To Mend the World: Foundations of Future Jewish Thought (section IV), Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (Part 3) and, finally, Giorgio Agamben's "Homo Sacer": Bare Life and Sovereign Power (Part 3). Each of these author's writings are used as a focus for a discussion of the self-destructive tendencies that are a part of Nazism in its relationship to: Law, the Idea of Man and Ideology. An effort is made during the discussion of these topics to arrive at an appreciation of the extremely alarming extent to which the Nazis had enforced the creation of a society that was wholly self-destructive. This argument concerning the Nazi understanding of humanity also recognizes the creation of a society that is wholly self-destructive as an underlying threat that continues to pose an ongoing danger to the post-Shoah world. The recognition of this threat unfortunately demonstrates the relevance of the Nazi understanding of humanity to this world (a relevance which at the outset may not have been apparent). Amongst the challenges this poses is that as the creation of a wholly self-destructive society further intensifies the possibility for philosophy increasingly disappears. In the concluding chapter, reference is again made to the writings of Fackenheim, Arendt and Agamben. These writings are referred to as part of a discussion of resistance to the threat of creating a post-Shoah world that develops into a society that is wholly self-destructive. Also included in this discussion is the importance of this type of resistance to the possibility for philosophy in this world.

Abstract not available.